Johnson's strong showing in the latest poll comes despite controversy over the former New Mexico governor questioning what Aleppo was during an MSNBC interview on Sept. 8.

"And what is Aleppo?" Johnson had asked in response to a question over what he would do about the war-torn Syrian city as president, shocking MSNBC hosts.

Johnson then responded that he thought Aleppo was an acronym, and he thought the U.S. should cooperate with Russia in Syria to bring the civil war to a diplomatic end and not involve the U.S. militarily. He later said he had "blanked."

The online poll of 1,399 people — released Monday by We Are The Mighty, Doctrine Man, Military OneClick and Got Your 6 — was conducted between Sept. 7 and Sept. 10 via SurveyMonkey. The poll has a margin of error of 3 percentage points.

Johnson has garnered strong support from the military in previous surveys — taking 39 percent among active-duty respondents in a Doctrine Man poll conducted in July, and 13 percent in a Military Times poll earlier that month.

In fact, polls in recent years say troops are becoming increasingly libertarian.

A 2014 Military Times survey showed that the number of troops who identified themselves as Republican was dropping, while those identifying themselves as libertarian or independent was rising.

In 2012, the presidential campaign of then-Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), a staunch libertarian, took in more than four times the donations from individual active-duty military voters and Pentagon employees than the three other Republican candidates combined, according to one report.

Johnson has pledged to balance the budget, cut military spending by 43 percent down to 2003 levels and reduce the U.S. nuclear arsenal.